WASHINGTON (August 26, 2026) — Today, Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization, announced the selection of nine interdisciplinary scholars as PRRI Public Fellows, the organization’s ninth cohort of fellows and the second cohort under its Religion and Protecting Democracy Initiative. Selected via a nationwide open call for mid-career scholars, the diverse cohort will work alongside PRRI researchers and staff to generate impactful commentary and analysis at the intersection of religion, culture, and politics. 

“America is undergoing sweeping political, social, and religious change, with new fault lines emerging alongside old ones,” said Melissa Deckman, Ph.D., chief executive officer of PRRI. “Investing in public scholars who can illuminate these dynamics is central to PRRI’s mission. This year’s Public Fellows bring the kind of rigorous, innovative research that will sharpen how we read and respond to this pivotal moment.” 

Through the Religion and Protecting Democracy Initiative, the Public Fellows program encourages collaboration and professional growth. During their time in the program, Public Fellows will be organized into four groups, based on their work in PRRI’s major research areas: immigration and American society; LGBTQ rights and gender politics; and pluralism and democracy. All Public Fellows also benefit from PRRI’s ongoing public opinion research and media contacts. 

The PRRI Public Fellows program is made possible through generous grants from the Mellon Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation. The 2026-2027 cohort is comprised of scholars with expertise across the humanities, humanistic social sciences, and empirical social sciences, including history, sociology, political science, anthropology, and religious studies. 

PRRI welcomes 2026-2027 Public Fellows: Dr. Jonathan E. Calvillo, Dr. Risa Cromer, Dr. Maggie Elmore, Dr. James Hill Jr., Dr. Nancy Khalil, Dr. Bethany Mannon, Dr. Max Mueller, Dr. Joshua Tom, and Dr. Brooklyn Walker.  

About PRRI 

PRRI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to conducting independent research at the intersection of religion, culture, and public policy. 

2026-2027 PRRI Public Fellows

Immigration and American Society 

Jonathan E. Calvillo, Ph.D.  

Associate Professor of Latinx Communities, Candler School of Theology, Emory University 

Jonathan Calvillo is Associate Professor of Latinx Communities at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. His work examines how distinct Latine populations build communities of belonging through faith and creativity, often amidst systemic exclusion.  As a sociologist and ethnographer, his expertise resides at the intersections of Latine lived religion, ethnoracial formation, civic engagement, urban migration, and grassroots creative movements. Calvillo has published three monographs:  The Saints of Santa Ana: Faith and Ethnicity in a Mexican Majority City (2020), In the Time of Sky-rhyming: How Hip Hop Resonated in Brown Los Angeles (2024), and When the Spirit Is Your Inheritance: Reflections on Borderlands Pentecostalism (2024).  The son of Mexican immigrants, he was born and raised in Southern California.  

Maggie Elmore, Ph.D.  

Associate Professor of Borderlands History, Department of History, Baylor University 

Maggie Elmore is Associate Professor of Borderlands History at Baylor University. She studies how law, race, religion, and politics shape migration experiences and border policies in the 20th and 21st centuries. Her current book, Unholy Border: Migrants, Catholics, and the Making of the Border State is under contract with Penn Press.  Her most recent articles have appeared in The Journal of American History and Modern American History. Her article, “In the Shadow of the Law: The Hanigan Case and the Genesis of the Immigrant Rights Movement” received the 2025 Bolton-Cutter award from the Western History Association. 

LGBTQ Rights and Gender Politics 

Risa Cromer, Ph.D.  

Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Purdue University 

Risa Cromer is a cultural anthropologist specializing in the intersections of religion and reproductive politics in the United States. Her research has been supported by the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Institute for Citizens & Scholars, Luce Foundation, American Association of Religion, and American Association of University Women. She is the author of Conceiving Christian America: Embryo Adoption and Reproductive Politics (NYU Press 2023), which offers a feminist cultural analysis of how religious conservatives advance nationalist ambitions through assisted reproduction, showing that debates about embryos are never just about embryos. Cromer’s work has been featured in numerous peer-reviewed academic journals and popular outlets, including Medical Anthropology and The Conversation. She is working on her next book about faith leaders who support reproductive rights and justice. 

Bethany Mannon, Ph.D.  

Associate Professor of English, Appalachian State University 

Bethany Mannon is Associate Professor of English at Appalachian State University. She is the author of ‘I Grew Up in the Church’: How American Evangelical Women Tell Their Stories (Baylor University Press, 2024). Her research examines feminist rhetoric, religious rhetoric, and social movements, and she is currently writing a book about Rachel Held Evans (forthcoming from Baylor University Press in 2027). With Jim Vining, she is co-editing a collection of essays on the rhetoric of the Christian Left in the US. Bethany lives in the mountains of east Tennessee with her husband, two kids, two dogs, and five chickens. 

Brooklyn Walker, Ph.D.  

Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Tennessee-Knoxville 

Brooklyn Walker is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her research explores the intersection of religious identities with political attitudes and behavior, with particular attention to Christian nationalism, religious gender worldviews, and religious pluralism.  Her work has been published in Political Behavior, Public Opinion Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, and Politics and Religion. 

Pluralism and Democracy 

James Hill Jr., Ph.D.  

Assistant Professor of Religion and African American & Black Diaspora Studies, Boston University 

James H. Hill, Jr. is Assistant Professor of Religion at Boston University, where he teaches and researches American religions and public humanities, with particular attention to Black study, religion and the politics of popular culture in the United States, political theory, Black political thought, modernity, ecology, coloniality, and conceptual methodologies in the study of religion. His work approaches American religions as a public and ethical question, examining how religious meanings are produced, governed, and contested through social, political, and economic realities that function as racial projects, while remaining attentive to forms of religious life that exceed dominant frameworks of legibility yet remain central to public life in the United States. He is the author of The Haunted Fantastic: On Faith, Vocation, and Critical Hope (Fortress Press, forthcoming February 2027) and The Michael Jackson Cacophony (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming). He holds degrees from Criswell College, Southern Methodist University, and Northwestern University.  

Nancy Khalil, Ph.D.  

Assistant Professor, Department of American Culture, University of Michigan 

Nancy A. Khalil is an assistant professor in American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with an appointment in its ethnic studies program for Arab and Muslim American Studies. She is currently the Faculty Chair of the Islamophobia Working Group at the University of Michigan as well as the Founding Director of the Research Lab on U.S. Muslims and Higher Education and serves as a Board Member for Pillars Fund. She has a Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University and an MA in higher education administration from Boston College. Prior to academia, she worked for several years in student life, including overseeing student diversity programs and initiatives, as Muslim Chaplain at Wellesley College and adviser to Wellesley’s Multi-faith Living and Learning Community.  

Max Mueller, Ph.D.  

Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln 

Max Perry Mueller is an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Mueller is a theorist and historian of race and religion in American history, with particular interest in Indigenous and African-American religious experiences, epistemologies, and cosmologies. His first book, Race and the Making of the Mormon People (The University of North Carolina Press, 2017), examines how the three original American races — “red,” “black,” and “white” — were constructed as literary projects before these racial categories were read onto bodies of Americans of Native, African, and European descent. He second book, Wakara’s America: the Life and Legacy of a Native Founder of the American West (Basic Books, 2025) was, among other awards, a finalist for the Plutarch Award for Best Biography (2026). Mueller has written on religion, race, and politics for outlets including Slate, The New Republic, and The Atlantic. During his fellowship, he will be writing his next book, More, America: Twenty-Five More Founder of the United States of America (HarperCollins).

Joshua Tom, Ph.D.  

Associate Professor of Sociology, Seattle Pacific University 

Joshua Tom is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the University Scholars Honors Program at Seattle Pacific University. He conducts research on race and American religion, with a focus on American evangelicals. He is currently working on a project exploring the religious and cultural identities of second and third- generation Asian Americans. His work has been published in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Sociological Perspectives, and Socius, among others.